How can pilots avoid turbulence

For example, those burbling, cotton-ball cumulus clouds—particularly the anvil-topped variety that occur in conjunction with thunderstorms—are always a lumpy encounter. Flights over mountain ranges and through certain frontal boundaries will also get the cabin bells dinging, as will transiting a jet stream boundary. But weather is always changing, and predicting the where, when, and how much of turbulence can sometimes be a guessing game. When we hit those bumps on the way to Europe that night, what info we had told us not to expect anything worse than mild chop.

Later, in an area where stronger turbulence had been forecast, it was smooth. You just never know. There are definitions for each degree, but in practice the grades are awarded subjectively. One of those severes took place in July , when I was captain on a fifteen-passenger turboprop. It was, of all flights, a twenty-five-minute run from Boston to Portland, Maine.

It had been a hot day, and by early evening, a forest of tightly packed cumulus towers stretched across eastern New England. The formations were short—about 8, feet at the tops, and deceptively pretty to look at. They were beautiful and, it turned out, quite violent — little volcanoes spewing out invisible updrafts. The pummeling came on with a vengeance until it felt like being stuck in an upside-down avalanche.

Even with my shoulder harness pulled snug, I remember holding up a hand to brace myself, afraid my head might hit the ceiling. Minutes later, we landed safely in Portland. No damage, no injuries. Now, it would be unwise of me to sugarcoat this too much, and I concede that powerful turbulence has, on occasion, resulted in damage to aircraft and injury to their occupants.

Each year worldwide, about a hundred people, half of them flight attendants, are hurt by turbulence seriously enough to require medical attention — head, neck, shoulder and ankle injuries being the most common.

That works out to about fifty passengers. Fifty out of the two billion or so who fly each year. The bad news is, that number will probably be going up. Evidence shows that turbulence is becoming stronger and more prevalent as a byproduct of climate change. Turbulence is a symptom of the weather from which it spawns, and it stands to reason that as global warming destabilizes weather patterns and intensifies storms, experiences like the one I had over Maine, and the ones that keep popping up in the news, will become more common.

Because turbulence can be unpredictable, I am known to provide annoying, noncommittal answers when asked how best to avoid it:. Everyone has a story about hitting a rough patch of air, those hair-raising moments when suddenly more than the plane is flying.

Bellies drop, drinks slop, and people caught in the aisle lurch against seats. In rare cases, it can even mean more than bumps or bruises. In air travel, turbulence is a certainty and a major source of flight anxiety for flyers of all stripes. The definition of turbulence is fairly straightforward: chaotic and capricious eddies of air , disturbed from a calmer state by various forces. Rough air happens everywhere, from ground level to far above cruising altitude.

But the most common turbulence experienced by flyers has three common causes: mountains, jet streams, and storms. Just as ocean waves break on a beach, air also forms waves as it encounters mountains. While some air passes smoothly over and onward, some air masses crowd against the mountains themselves, left with nowhere to go but up. Disorderly air associated with jet streams—the narrow, meandering bands of swift winds located near the poles—is caused by differences in wind velocities as an aircraft moves away from regions of maximum wind speeds.

The decelerating winds create shear regions that are prone to turbulence. The rapid growth of storm clouds pushes air away, generating waves in the atmosphere that can break up into turbulence hundreds to even thousands of miles away, says Robert Sharman, a turbulence researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research NCAR.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, passengers and crew were reported injured by turbulence between and Though weather forecasts and pilot reports are helpful for avoiding bumpy zones, they are relatively blunt tools, Sharman says. Using data on forward velocity, wind speed, air pressure, roll angle, and other factors, the algorithm generates a local atmospheric turbulence level, which is fed back into a national system every minute.

Used in conjunction with national weather forecasts and models, the tool annotates forecasts with real-time conditions, which in turn helps to strengthen weather prediction models.

Over 12, Delta Airlines pilots currently use tablets loaded with the tool to check conditions along their flight paths. I followed the proper procedures as practiced during my initial training and as published in the Aeronautical Information Manual AIM Chapter 7, section 3.

I recalled the least favorable conditions are a heavy, clean aircraft with a light quarterly tailwind. The opportunity to climb did not present itself. Already at full power, the best I could do was keep the wings level and fly the airplane.

I learned a critical lesson from this experience regarding the least favorable wind conditions and to factor in cross runways. Turbulence has the potential to be dangerous. Then and now, I keep this in mind when flying. Student pilots learn that air is a fluid. Air can be measured and has weight. Turbulence is caused when an airplane flies through waves of air that are irregular or violent, which cause the aircraft to bounce around yawing, pitching, or rolling. You can compare turbulence to two oceans meeting.

Both oceans have large waves and currents that, as they collide, create even larger waves and currents. And that usually happens at or above 30, feet.

In many cases, pilots know of turbulent conditions ahead and can turn on the seatbelt sign as the plane approaches it. Pilots are also aided by pre-flight weather reports, cockpit radar, and reports from other planes in the area. Clear air turbulence is the most dangerous kind, as it occurs in cloudless skies with perfect visibility—so oncoming turbulence cannot be picked up by weather radar. This leaves little to no time for the flight crew to warn passengers to return to their seats and buckle up.

Unsurprisingly, most turbulence-related injuries are due to clear air turbulence. According to scientists, the amount of extreme clear air turbulence affecting flights could more than double by the middle of the century due to global warming.

So brace yourself for more bumpy flights.